When I started Game development, I thought I should start with a small project and take it all the way to completion, so that I would have all the basics in place. Coding at home is nothing like coding at work... Also I wanted to build something with a website and that used OpenGL.

So I built Headline Benchmark, unashamedly the Windows Ubuntu Experience Index! It's a bit like a game - you get scores, it uses OpenGL... Arguably, it is not a game because it does not have a game loop, although that is straying into Gaming Philosophy.

You can go along to my site and download it for yourself for Windows or Linux - it takes about five minutes to run:

After running it, you can click the Submit button to send the results to the website.

I don't have proper installers yet - just archives and shell scripts, but I will add these as I want to put it on the Ubuntu Software Center. (And also the Windows Store, assuming that allows Java apps).

Very cool actually! Is your rating index just based on clock speed/amount of RAM etc... Or does it actually use data from the internet and using that to compare? Because some CPUs my be faster on paper, but slower in an actually computer... just wondering how you calculate the results, its very interesting!

Very cool actually! Is your rating index just based on clock speed/amount of RAM etc... Or does it actually use data from the internet and using that to compare? Because some CPUs my be faster on paper, but slower in an actually computer... just wondering how you calculate the results, its very interesting!

The component scores are aggregated from the system results. I don't just store an average - I build a curve of results to show effects of overclocking or power-saving states, but I don't have enough data yet to make it worth my time to build the JSPs to show the curves (I would need dozens of different systems contributing data for each component). Each component tells you how many results and unique systems have contributed to the aggregate.

@Mickelukas, if I integrate my chess game as another performance test, will it qualify as a game then? (The computer would play itself of course.)

One user has hit an error and nicely allowed the app to send the website an error report - so automated error reporting seems to be working correctly too. As for the exception, I think some graphics cards are giving me null graphic card name.

EDIT: It turns out that recent Nvidia cards (at least certain 7xx series) do not support the JOGL GL2 profile, causing graphics tests to fail, and causing serialization of the results to fail too (even if graphics tests aren't run). I should have a fix soon.

I have released a new version of Headline Benchmark, fixing some screen flickering in one of the OpenGL tests and rebalancing the system scores. I also added a feedback button so users can send in feedback directly from the app (the feedback goes into the bug tracking system on my website).

I also added a command-line pure Java version for testing CPUs on any system. (The full application is restricted to only Linux and Windows as it uses OS-specific commands to get hardware information).

I started work on the Windows installer at long last. The first step was wrapping the JAR with Launch4J which went flawlessly, to my surprise. I just need to figure out some art for a splash screen (something transparent, I think) and then I will build the MSI with this tool:

I uploaded a new version. The main changes this time are for Windows users - the app is now wrapped in an EXE by launch4j. This allows me to easily set the process priority to high, and also lets me offer a Java download for users without a public JRE.

As a Win-32 exclusive, the new splash screen is also available.

I also added some code to try to read CPU name from the registry if my calls to WMIC fail, as they occasionally do.

Also, I now have an application icon, so no more generic Java coffee cup :-)

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org